Privileges app: sudo for macOS

By default, the first user that you create on macOS is an administrator and has more power over the system than a normal user account. The reason it does this is obvious as you need this power to create other users, to install software and so on. However it also means that the computer is slightly more vulnerable to attack via a vulnerability in the software I use day to day.

To combat this, I run with my user account as a normal user and have a separate admin account for privilege escalation. This is remarkably easy on macOS as whenever the system needs to do something that needs more rights than my user, it pops up a dialog asking for the credentials of an administrative user.

When I have a lot of work to do that requires an administrative user, typing in the admin user’s creds for every action is tedious. What I need is something like sudo, but for my Mac, so I use the Privileges app from SAP for this. This app provides a way to request admin rights for my current user account so that I can then do all the admin tasks without having to keep entering credentials.

Once I request privileges, my account has admin rights until they either expire, I remove them or a I reboot. The time limit is configured in the Settings and I have it set to 30 minutes as it’s rare that I sill need admin rights after that long and I never remember to turn them off.

It’s nice and easy, and my Mac is that much more secure. I highly recommend that you try it.